Page:Principlesofpoli00malt.djvu/165

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SEC. V.]
MEASURES OF VALUE.
103

stances it would surely be most preposterous to measure the value of Chinese labour in China by money, instead of measuring the money by the labour.

Yet, still it is perfectly true, that a Chinese commodity carried to Hamburgh would be sold at its China money price, with the addition of the freight, insurance, profits, &c. of the last voyage; and an English merchant purchasing Hamburgh and Chinese goods, would unquestionably estimate their relative values by their cost in money, without the least reference to the very different quantities of labour which had been employed in obtaining them; or if he chanced to hear something about the greater quantity of Chinese labour employed on the articles from China, for which he had paid the same price as for the Hamburgh goods, he would be inclined, and not very unnaturally, to estimate the value of Chinese labour very low. It is most justly observed by Adam Smith, that the merchant, in all his transactions, has only to consider money prices.

To a merchant, therefore, living in London and purchasing goods at Hamburgh, Chinese labour, if estimated at all, would necessarily be estimated at a low value. But he would fall into a gross error if he were to infer that it was therefore low in China. When the value of money, or of any other article in China is spoken of, it would imply a gross perversion of language to suppose that the person speaking meant the value of Chinese money, Chinese goods, or Chinese labour in Hamburgh or London. The expression in China, cannot mean in Hamburgh, or in London. What alone can be correctly meant by the value of money, or of any other commodity in China is, the estimation in which such money is held in China, determined at all times by the state of the supply compared with the demand, and ordinarily by the elementary costs of its production in China, or what comes to the same thing, the value of money in China, is its power of purchasing in China, arising from intrinsic causes. And as it is obvious, that the quantity of Chinese la-

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